Frazz by Jef Mallett for November 01, 2012

Caulfield really does need to evolve in a positive direction. M-A-T-U-R-E would’ve been a better word.

“Manure” isn’t pronounce in a way that’s parallel to “picture” OR “mature”…

And “conure” and “conjure” sound similar…. but nothing like “manure.” Welcome to English, those who are trying to learn it.

Did he pronounce it “Maytcher”?

ne7… it could go on for hours…Don’t even START on “ough”coughboughthoughthroughenough(slough can rhyme with BOTH of the last two…)thoughtwhich BTW rhymes with caughttautbut not drought..…. my brain hurts…

What three-letter word makes a different word when combined with the following letters:

CDLRSW?

Is there another way to spell ghoti?

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” — James Nicoll

Mouse => MiceLouse => LiceHouse =/>Hice

Tooth => TeethBooth =/> Beeth

Goose => GeeseMoose =/> Meese

I wonder about this too. I am not native English and during my questionably successful attempts to learn this language, I realised that it is (they are) two different languages. The written English and the spoken English have some obscure, twisted relatedness, but clearly not the same language. :)

runar, great quote…Susan, I used to teach English as a second language to folks from around the world……..Pronunciation drove them crazy….Why? Why? they would ask….Sometimes I would just apologize on behalf of English speakers everywhere…

Eddie Izzard’s award winning “Dress to Kill” has a great segment on the difference in British and English pronunciations of several words…laugh out loud funny. I have watched it 20, 30 times, laughing all the way through. Netflix it!!

That would be British and American….

English is like a platypus, isn’t it? So English has a live and let live attitude. Given its history, can you blame it? I’m reminded of this verse from The Cars’ song “Good Times Roll”: If the illusion is real let them give you a ride. If they got thunder appeal let them be on your side.

many languages have some quirks. english, german, spanish, japanese, etc…

Then there’s “stature,” another nonrhyme.

RUNAR: English grows words by stealing them from other languages; as a result, either the spelling is mutilated to keep the pronunciation, the pronunciation messed to keep the spelling, or both damaged..Other languages have their quirks (gender being the most obvious), but less so because of different ways to gain words. German describes it in as few words as possible, knocks out the spaces, and it is a new word – long, but one word. French turns it over l’Academie Française, which studies it for a decade before declaring it a proper word and thus one which can be used in legal documents. I saw a filler in a 1970s newspaper which reported they had approved “spaghetti” as a proper French word. I keep wondering what they used before.

When I was teaching middle school, the state sent some experts to teach us how to teach phonics. Most of the students were learining English. They had a good grasp of phonics in Spanish, but had limited English vocabulary. We asked for suggestions about teaching the meaning of words, but the experts said they weren’t there to do that. The phonics strategies included sounding out nonesense words to make up for the lack of words to fit some patterns. Some of the so-called nonesense words were actual words. So much for experts.

Has to do with word origins. Frequently, although not in this case, they come from different languages. In this case though, they both come from Latin, originally. Nature was one word in latin. Manure was 2 words combined. Hence the difference in pronunciation.

Consider that “English” is not a language, but a Meta-language.

It’s not passive, but evolving; thus the richness of it.

It’s beautiful, because it absorbs/amalgamates all other languages. It doesn’t care about particular phonics, it simply accepts them.

Wait, so that was IT yesterday?? “Edgar Alan Poodle”? THAT was Caulfield’s brilliant literary reference? I thought the storyline would be resolved today, with something…uh, a bit more clever than that (really wasn’t any better than “Dog Quixote”).

Oh, my bad, I guess – I missed yesterday’s strip. Pit and the Pendulum? Still lame.

you forgot ‘gaol’

I love the english language. it is the language that is flexible..Davicdh 48 is on to something. English is an active language….Big time….It grabs things that it needs..adopts them whole…. And the neat thing is all the other languages of the world adopt English words too. English is the most beautiful and intricate language ever spoken in the world…All things are a part of it…Think I’ll go write a song…